Farm to School to Market: Scaling Biofortified Foods in India
Scaling for Impact is supporting HarvestPlus Solutions and partners across Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Jharkhand in moving biofortified crops beyond production — into school meals, local markets, and public systems for wider uptake.
Hidden hunger is not solved by better crops alone.
Biofortified wheat and pearl millet can bring more zinc and iron into diets. But for that nutrition to reach people at scale, the crops must move through real food systems: from seed to farms, from farms to processors, from processors to school meals and markets, and ultimately into public delivery systems and consumer diets.
That is the story emerging from Advancing Scaling of CGIAR Enabled Technologies for Nutrition (ASCENT).
Working with HarvestPlus Solutions, government partners including the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and school meals actors, and the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) under the Ministry of Rural Development, ASCENT is helping build a more integrated farm-to-school and farm-to-market model for biofortified foods in India.
The model has already reached an estimated 100,000 beneficiaries: around 50,000 children through school meals and 50,000 consumers through commercial markets. Farmer households are central participants in this ecosystem, not only as producers, but increasingly as aggregators, entrepreneurs, and suppliers within nutrition-focused value chains.
At the heart of the model are two CGIAR innovations: CIMMYT’s zinc wheat and ICRISAT’s iron pearl millet, replacing conventional wheat and pearl millet in selected value chains. These crops reportedly contain 33 percent more zinc and 40 percent more iron, respectively.
But ASCENT’s added value is not only in the crop science. It is in helping that science move.
From production to a complete scaling pathway
HarvestPlus Solutions and partners had already built strong foundations on the production side of biofortification. Farmers could access improved seed and grow biofortified crops. Women farmer producer groups were already active across the nutrition-focused value chain .
The next challenge was different: how to get biofortified foods to consumers consistently, affordably, and credibly.
That is where Scaling for Impact, through ASCENT, helped shift the model from a production alone toward the broader systems required for scale — including procurement, processing, institutional demand, consumer trust, and market integration.
In practice, this meant asking a different set of questions.
Who aggregates the grain? Who processes it? Who assures quality? Who buys it? How does a school meal program procure it? How does a consumer recognize it? And how can women farmers and self-help groups participate beyond simply supplying raw produce?
The answer was not a single intervention, but a connected system.
Scaling down: putting better nutrition into school meals
The first channel is scaling down — embedding biofortified foods into the institutions and routines that shape everyday diets.
Through collaboration with school meals actors and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, biofortified zinc wheat and iron pearl millet were introduced into residential tribal school meal programs in familiar forms such as chapatis and bhakris.
In 2025, around 30 metric tonnes of biofortified wheat were procured and distributed across 115 residential tribal schools, reaching approximately 50,000 children.
This is where scaling becomes tangible. A biofortified crop is no longer an innovation sitting in a field trial or supply chain. It becomes part of a school meal. It enters the diets of children who may be especially vulnerable to micronutrient deficiencies.
Early feedback from schools has been encouraging, including positive responses on taste and acceptability. The longer-term ambition is to connect these school meal channels more directly to local farmers, including tribal farming communities, so that nutrition outcomes and livelihood outcomes reinforce each other.
Scaling out: building procurement, processing and trusted markets
The second channel is scaling out — expanding sustainable demand through procurement systems, value chains, women-led enterprises, and commercial markets.
ASCENT helped partners look beyond production and ask how biofortified crops could move into more reliable and sustainable demand channels. Farmer-producer groups are supporting aggregation, quality control, and pricing. These groups are playing stronger roles in production, aggregation, and potentially other nodes of the value chain.
Processors can turn grain into products that institutions and consumers are ready to buy.
This matters because farmers do not scale innovations on good intentions alone. They need viable markets. They need predictable demand. They need value chains that reward quality and reduce uncertainty.
The same applies to consumers. Biofortified products need to be visible, credible, and easy to trust.
That is why the Neutral Mark is an important part of the scaling story. Designed as an authenticity and assurance seal for biofortified products, it helps products stand out in the market and signals that they meet defined micronutrient standards. It is still an emerging initiative, but it addresses a critical barrier: consumers need to know what they are buying and why it matters.
The Newtrii brand or platform also points in this direction, helping position biofortified foods as market-ready products rather than only development-sector commodities. Together, these efforts begin to bridge the gap between nutrition science and consumer choice.
Scaling up: from state-level demonstration to national pathways
The third channel is scaling up — using practical state-level experience to inform wider policy and institutional uptake.
Maharashtra stands out as a strong demonstration of the model in practice. The experience there is now helping shape thinking in other states, including Jharkhand, Rajasthan and potentially Uttar Pradesh.
The broader ambition is much larger. HarvestPlus Solutions already works across 10 states, while recent workshop discussions and action planning pointed to a pathway for 13 states to integrate biofortified varieties through NRLM and other institutional channels.
This is where the model becomes more than a project. It becomes a policy and delivery proposition.
NRLM provides an existing platform for women’s groups. School feeding systems create institutional demand. Farmer-producer groups and processors strengthen the value chain. Certification and branding support consumer trust. State-level experience generates evidence for wider adoption. National policy platforms can then help align these pieces.
The Innovation Packages and Scaling Readiness (IPSR) workshop on scaling biofortified crops helped bring these actors together around a 2030 vision: enabling millions of women farmers to grow and consume biofortified crops, reaching millions of children through public nutrition programs, and expanding access for consumers through commercial markets.
A central insight was the need to close the gap between readiness and use. Biofortified crops may be available, but they only deliver impact when seed systems, procurement, processing, markets, assurance systems, and policy all work together.
The Scaling for Impact lesson
ASCENT shows what it takes to move from innovation to impact.
The intervention has not only focused on improving crop production, but on making nutritious foods part of everyday systems — from schools and women’s groups to markets and public programs. As India strengthens its focus on preventive health and nutrition through initiatives such as the Science Excellence for Health through Agricultural Transformation (SEHAT) Mission, biofortified foods and lessons learnt from ASCENT can play a vital role in improving diet quality through market-based food systems.
The central lesson is that nutrition innovations scale most effectively when they embedded within systems people already rely on — schools, women farmer producer groups, procurement systems, and local markets. In India, ASCENT is demonstrating how biofortified crops can move beyond agricultural innovation to become an integral part of a broader food systems strategy that connects nutrition, livelihoods, women’s enterprise, and institutional demand at scale.
Acknowledgements
With thanks to Sanya Sharma, Jyoti Jha and Munawar Hussain of HarvestPlus Solutions for their contributions to this story.